Ruling — Caverna: The Cave Farmers

← Caverna: The Cave Farmers

You asked

How do I set up Caverna: The Cave Farmers for 2 players?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Caverna: The Cave Farmersbg-102794-en-1e

To set up Caverna: The Cave Farmers for 2 players, follow these steps:

1. Each player chooses a color and takes the Home board, 5 Dwarfs, and 3 Stables of that color.[1]

2. Place 2 of the 5 Dwarfs side by side in the "Entry-level dwelling" on your Home board.[1]

3. Keep the remaining 3 Dwarfs and Stables next to your Home board as your personal supply.[1]

4. Return the Dwarfs, Stables, and Home boards of any leftover colors to the game box.[1]

5. Take one of each of the 2 different Overview cards.[1]

6. Randomly determine which player receives the Starting player token.[1]

7. The Starting player and the player to his left each receive 1 Food.[1]

8. Place the two single-sided basic game boards (with Round spaces 1 to 3 and 4 to 12) next to each other.[1]

9. Shuffle the 7 Harvest markers and place them face-down on the Round spaces 6 to 12, one marker per space, with the grey rune symbol facing up.[1]

10. Remove one of the Harvest markers with a green leaf from the game.[1]

11. Distribute the remaining 6 markers among the Round spaces 6 to 12, leaving space 9 empty.[1]

12. Place the "Harvest events" card next to the game boards.[1]

13. Place the third basic game board to the left of the first two and turn it to the side appropriate for 1 to 3 players.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook · p.2

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 248 ms · ask 8916 ms · total 18879 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 9706 ms · generation 9173 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 1, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Wooden & acrylic playing pieces ~ 20 light brown Dog tokens ~ 35 white Sheep tokens ~ 30 grey Donkey tokens ~ 30 black Wild boar tokens ~ 30 brown Cattle tokens ~ 45 brown Wood tokens ~ 25 grey Stone tokens Caverna is a development strategy game for 1 to 7 players aged 12 and up. The playing time is", "headingPath": "Game idea · 16 Game boards · On counter sheets · Furnishing and landscape tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "This is the setup for a 3-player game. Especially in a 3-player game, players tend to forget about the additional game board. Place the supply boards near the other game boards as you see ﬁ t. There is a sufﬁ cient number of ordinary “Dwelling” tiles (costing 4 wood and 3 stone). You do not need to ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "No harvest Pay 1 Food per Dwarf instead of harvest Skip the Field phase or the Breeding phase 2 PLAYERS Setup We will explain the game for 2 to 7 players ﬁ rst. The solo rules will be explained on the last page. Your personal playing areas Each player chooses a color and takes the Home board and the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "We will explain the game for 2 to 7 players fi rst. The solo rules will be explained on the last page. Each player chooses a color and takes the Home board and the 5 Dwarfs and 3 Stables of that color. Place 2 of the 5 Dwarfs side by side in the 'Entrylevel dwelling' on your Home board. Keep the rem", "headingPath": "Setup · Your personal playing areas · The game boards with Action spaces", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Entry-level dwelling We recommend you cover the Dwarfs in your supply with Stables to avoid using them by accident before you are allowed to. Your ﬁ rst two Dwarfs live together in the entry-level room of their cave. Players get a different number of Food depending on their position in the turn orde", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "There are more ways to keep animals than shown on the previous page. Veteran 'Agricola' players may be highly interested in what the Weapons are for. In Caverna, your Dwarfs gather Ore to forge Weapons. The strength of a Weapon is determined by the amount of Ore used in the process and is increased ", "headingPath": "To get a grasp of what happens on your Home boards · Weapons and Expeditions · Number of components", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Your Home board consists of two parts . On the left side, there is a Forest that you will cut down during the course of the game. On the right side, there is a Mountain with an entrance to your cave system, which currently consists of two Caverns. One of these is the 'Entry-level dwelling' and has b", "headingPath": "Goal of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Weapons and Expeditions Veteran “Agricola” players may be highly interested in what the Weapons are for. In Caverna, your Dwarfs gather Ore to forge Weapons. The strength of a Weapon is determined by the amount of Ore used in the process and is increased by 1 after each Expedition. Depending on its ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 229}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 229 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 229 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until: Nov 10, 2026 18:27

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Game idea · 16 Game boards · On counter sheets · Furnishing and landscape tiles	p.1	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.3	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.2	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Setup · Your personal playing areas · The game boards with Action spaces	p.2	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.2	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	To get a grasp of what happens on your Home boards · Weapons and Expeditions · Number of components	p.5	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Goal of the game	p.4	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.5	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 55 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.2	#5	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.14	#17	0.012987 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.2	#3	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Goal of the game	p.4	#7	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Details on Bonus points · Rules for the solo game · In comparison with the 2-player game · Refi lling the accumulating spaces	p.24	#10	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.14	#12	0.013889 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Who will be the Starting player next round? · Details on the 'Excavation' and 'Drift mining' Action spaces remember: use additional game boards if you have Ruby mine	p.13	#9	0.014493 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)	Game idea · 16 Game boards · On counter sheets · Furnishing and landscape tiles	p.1	#1	0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Caverna: The Cave Farmers — Rulebook (corpus doc 229)		p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 248 ms · first delta 6523 ms · total 18879 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 9706 ms · retrieval 248 ms · ask 8916 ms · gateway work 9173 ms · total 18879 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4186
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 363
tok/sec: 139.9 tok/sec — 363 output tokens in 2.595 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 155), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.